Intel’s next-gen chips are expected to hit the streets in the second half of 2017… which could mean any day now. So maybe it’s not surprising that we’re starting to see laptops powered by Intel Coffee Lake chips.

Well actually yeah, it is a little surprising since Intel has yet to officially announce any Coffee Lake model numbers, specs, or release dates. But that hasn’t stopped some retail sites such as France’s Rue Du Commerce from showing listings for an Acer Swift 3 notebook with an Intel Core i5-8250U Coffee Lake processor.

Whoops.

Rue du Commerce

The 15 watt chip is described as a 1.6 GHz processor with turbo boost speeds up to 3.4 GHz. And it’s expected to be a 14nm processor, much like Intel’s last few generations of chips. The company is expected to move to a 10nm process next year.

Interestingly, some leaks indicate the chip will be a quad-core processor (without hyperthreading, which means 4 cores = 4 threads), while others suggest it’ll have 4 logical cores, which would probably mean it’s a dual-core chip with two physical cores and hyperthreading support so that 2 cores = 4 threads.

If this is actually a quad-core chip, it’d be one of the first Intel Core U-series processors to have four physical cores. But we may have to wait a little longer to find out for certain.

As for the Acer Swift 3, it seems like the Coffee Lake model is an updated version of a laptop Acer recently launched featuring Kaby Lake processor options.

The Cofee Lake version is said to feature a 14 inch full HD display, NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of solid state storage. And if the Rue Du Commerce page is correct, it’ll sell for about 1099 Euroes in Europe.

via LaptopMedia and PurePC

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6 replies on “Coffee Lake chips are coming (according to leaked Acer laptop retail listing)”

  1. I highly doubt it will be a 15watt chip AND quadcore… while still being on the same +14nm lithography and pretty much the same/identical microarchitecture.
    It’s probably Intel giving the public Hyperthreading as a free upgrade.

    This is all because Intel is caving under the pressure of Ryzen.
    So Hyperthreading will now become a regular commodity, rather than an exclusive to Core i7 chips. I feel like Intel is anxiously waiting for the Ryzen R3 chips, and will at anytime, flip-flop on their Coffee Lake products and codenames to better match AMD.

    Remember Intel doesn’t want to make better chips, they want to make newer chips and keep the upgrades gradual to really milk profits from each lithography and microarchitecture step. So if AMD is significantly better, they will be forced to bring upgrades to their regular lineup. However if AMD is marginally better, Intel won’t make upgrades and will take the hit this round and thrive on their namesake alone. They will then compete when they’ve gone to the 7nm route.

    I’d love to be wrong, and say that Ryzen forced Intel to bring their new microarchitecture that they were withholding and saving up for 2019, and instead bring it to 2017-2018. And that despite being on +14nm lithography, the efficiency improvements have allowed them to bring Quadcores to the Low-Power market… thus ushering in a new era of computing, like we saw from the jump from the old Core2Duo’s to the Core i-Sandy Bridge computers.

    With that all said, I’m content with the power of their iGPU’s but I want Ultrabooks to get decent Quadcore chips. That way we can get Thin/Light and Convertible tablet-laptops to dock at home and power out with an externalGPU. And so we can keep our laptops for a long-time.

    1. Their dual core laptop line all has hyper
      threading enabled. i3, i5, and i7. I’m expecting a quad core with those clock speeds honestly.

      1. Hmmm, you’re right.
        I didn’t notice they changed it, because Hyperthreading used to be a “luxury” feature.

        So maybe the 8th-gen Coffee Lake chips are based on a next-gen microarchitecture that’s actually a large-rewrite/leap (think: Pentium D to Core 2 Duo, or Core 2 Duo to Sandy Bridge).
        There’s no other possibility, both are at similar lithography.

        It’s like upgrading from a GTX 680 (4GB/1300MHz/28nm) to a GTX 960 (2GB/1500MHz/28nm), improvements come not from the lithography but the microarchitecture design. So I’m guessing the “old” Core i7-6700HQ (4c/8t, 35W, 3.5GHz) will become equivalent to the new Core i7-8600U (4c/8t, 28W, 3.3GHz).

        That’s basically desktop performance (~ i7-2600k/r5-1500X performance) in a tablet/thin-light chassis. Which is what I’ve been wanting since 2013. Or maybe even a step further with Quadcore-Core M chips for maximum efficiency.

        1. I think reality is going to be a bitch and remind us that a 15W quad-core chip based on the current Core architecture is simply going to be a Core M processor with 4 cores; while it’s still an improvement, it’s not exactly the quad core processor we expect or want.

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